If you’re planning on taking a long vacation this summer, one of the biggest questions you may have is whether you should turn off the AC unit in your Baltimore, Maryland, home before you leave. Although you might assume that turning off your air conditioner when you’re away from home will save you money, the opposite is actually true.
Leaving your air conditioner off for long periods of time can actually cause big problems that may end up costing you money and interfere with your family’s comfort. Here are a few reasons you shouldn’t turn off your Baltimore AC unit while you’re on vacation, and what you can do to save money on your energy bills.
Stop Humidity by Turning Up Your Air Conditioner
In addition to controlling the temperature in your home, your air conditioner also controls humidity. If you turn off your system when you leave for vacation, it’s likely that you’ll come home to a stuffy house due to soaring humidity levels. In addition to being downright uncomfortable, an overly humid house can be attractive to bugs, which means you might come back from your relaxing vacation to a stressful pest problem.
Instead of turning your air conditioner off while you’re away, raise your thermostat to 85 degrees. Raising your thermostat to this temperature means that your AC unit will turn on from time to time while you’re away, and your house will stay at the ideal humidity level. When you get back from your trip, you won’t have to deal with a stuffy home or unwanted insect intruders.
Maintain Your Comfort
When you come home from your vacation, you want to know that your house will be comfortable. Keeping the air conditioner on can control the humidity in your home, but that’s not the only way that leaving your unit on will make sure that you return to a comfortable house.
If you turn your air conditioner off, it means your home will be completely unprotected from the outside temperature. When it’s extremely hot outside the house, it will be hot inside the house as well. When you get back home, you may find that your house is way too hot for comfort. Because your system has been off, it’s going to take a while for your unit to power back up and lower the temperature to a comfortable level.
By leaving your unit on, you’ll prevent the inside of your house from getting too hot. When your vacation is over, your air conditioner won’t strain to cool your home, and you won’t have to wait too long for that perfect temperature.
Install a Programmable Thermostat
While raising your thermostat before you leave on vacation is a good idea, an even better solution for saving money and keeping your home comfortable is installing a programmable thermostat. By some estimates, programmable thermostats can save you up to 10% on your yearly energy bills when they’re used the right way.
With a programmable thermostat, you can raise and lower the temperature in your home at certain points of the day for optimal efficiency. For instance, you could set your thermostat to raise the temperature 10 degrees during the day and then to lower at night so that you’re not wasting any energy keeping an empty house too cool.
Using a programmable thermostat is also an excellent way to ensure your family’s comfort when you get home. When you’re an hour away from your house, you can set your thermostat to lower the temperature so that it will be cool when you finally get back.
Turning off the AC unit in your home before a trip isn’t the best idea when it comes to comfort or saving money. Instead, you should call Griffith Energy Services, Inc. at 888-474-3391 to schedule the installation of a programmable thermostat. We’ll help you choose the thermostat that best meets your needs and explain optimal settings so that you can save money while you’re on vacation and return to a comfortable home.
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